[Dan]

I am probably in the minority, but I have had two tanks on my first coach and single holding tanks on the following two, and I have yet to feel compelled to flush a tank. I know about all the gadgets to back flow water into a tank, about spray nozzles and the like but my practice is to allow the tank to get relatively full before dumping. Never an issue. So far, so good.

As to odors, if you have even the slightest odor of a holding tank inside the coach, the problem has nothing to do with whether the tank has been flushed or not, and everything to do with having an open path from your drains to the holding tank. All drains should have water filled traps.

Back flushing you living room and bed room carpeting is probably an experience most of us can do without.

[Per]

OK Charles, you lost me on this one. Single tank, dual tank, I don’t get the single tank benefit you’re describing.

Forget the rinsing part, a single tank holds waste and water, a dual tank holds waste and water seperate allowing the sewer hose to be rinsed with water. Your sewer hose is poo water, how is that better?

Bernie, are you with me on this….

[Archived]

Seems like if you overflow either tank, and get it into the coach, you have a mess no matter what. Have you also noticed that grey water smells about as bad a black water? Key is to regularly check the holding tanks when you are camping.

[Archived]

This never needs any discussion if you never fill the water tank without dumping the holding tanks. Relying on city water or autofill has the potential to create this issue if you forget to dump.

[Bernie]

I have now had both, and don’t have a strong preference either way. Tom is right about the hose…it is way less smelly if you dump the gray tank last through it. I always did that with the Legendary.

But, the concentration in the larger single tank isn’t as bad as a dedicated black tank, so it isn’t as bad as if you had to dump a black tank and had no gray water to rinse. I guess either works fine for most people.

[Archived]

I don’t know Truk, 1 or 2 tanks make no difference if you let the rinse out water run, your swimming.

I don’t understand either.

This happens more than people think. Mostly by inexperienced bus washers who disconnect the main water line and tap into your water hose to wash then put it back on the wrong connection and there you go.

On buses it’s harder to mess up because most have quick connects.

When you have to change your toilet out Godfather you’ll wish you didn’t treat that dump tank like a sceptic tank.

PEEEEUUUUWWWW

Later

bv

[Steve]

We’ve only had two coaches…. the first had two tanks and now, we have one 189 gallon holding tank.

Here are the pluses to me:

– You can put more in one tank than two…. you never fill a tank anyway and not filling two tanks gives you less capacity.

– Hit one switch and you are all done.

– After I release the pleasant smell of the rose petals… I unhook the hose from the coach and go over to the water spigot and run fresh water through it so it’s even cleaner than running grey water through the hose. And no, I don’t touch the sewer hose to the spigot as I hold it down and let the water run into the hose (at least 7-8 inchs from the water flow).

The minues:

Can’t think of any.

Mark

[John]

Have (2) 75 gallon holding tanks on my old coach. Have 4″ plugs in top of tanks and wash um down every time. How do you run them over with a monitor to watch (gauge) them?

[Tim]

Ok

I don’t want this to become a Marathon Vs. Liberty thing but this is my two cents on this. It’s complicated and over engineered for what it is but it sure nice on a marathon to put the cap on the hose after dumping both tanks the hose is clean. Press a button and the hose retracts..another button and the drop door goes up and I don’t have to touch a hose, rinse a hose etc.

To Jon’ s point about never filling the tank without dumping first. I guess that means your pump is always on?

To each his own I guess

[Chas]

My pump is always on because with the Headhunter toilet a high volume, high pressure flow is required and I can never count on either from city water, but it always works very well with my pump.

I cannot speak about other coaches, but I always have ample flow and pressure to allow any and all water usage at the same time with no loss of preformance.

[Corey]

It’s interesting… Two people at the park mentioned this potential risk in the past week (they were back flushing their tanks and had to keep an eye/mind on what they were doing to not flood the inside of their coach). Then the gentleman across from me did this by accident (hooked his fresh water hose to the wrong connector).

He isn’t inexperienced, he seemed more flustered. Sounds like his trip was not 100% perfect and he was probably a little tired. Add to that his new wife not 100% bought into the “trailer park” life style, I am sure that wasn’t helping.

While giving him assistance, I noticed he has his hose hooked to the flush hookup, and immediatly switched it for him, as well as figured out his pump was not turned on.

Before I bought our current coach, I never allowed anyone to do a #2 in our trailer. Only allowed #1 and had no problem with grey water usage. Because of this, I never even thought of having to backflush the black tank, even though now that I look back, I did have the hookups for that. So I guess I never had the opprotunity to overflow the system and flood the trailer. With my past lack of experience and current setup, I saw the benefit of not needing to “flush” the tank as a benefit.

I use our systems like Jon does. I dont leave my tank valves open and I dont keep city water open. I fill fresh water as I need it and dump at the same time. I hav fear of going out for the day and having a flooded coach of fresh water due to something going wrong/breaking. Sure it can happen with the fresh water tank, but that’s limited to 100 gallons, where city water is an endless supply of water. I’ll take “100 gallons over endless gallons for $1000 Alex”. As for the waste, well since we are using it for all things waste, it has a good amount of water in there at all times to flush the tank when I dump. We tend to make sure that before departing, we dump, then do either a load of laundry or shower and dump again to really flush the tank, but I think that is overkill.

[Chas]

Those guys need a warning label.

Hey numb nut, if you use the tank flush, you have to open the sewer valves.

[Bernie]

Is Truk turning into the Bernie of the Southeast ? Geo.

[Bernie]

We do that for you GEO, so you can understand it.

Your on notice and banned from the westcoast.

Later

bv

[Corey]

Tom,

Ye, I already thought about adding some labels to his hookups so he doesnt do it again 🙂

He did have his dumps closed, so that wasn’t helping. However from what I have heard, that’s kind of part of the process. Close dumps, back fill black tank part way, then open valve while continueing to flush for a while. Some others mentioned that this seems to be a common mistake and can get away from those that are not paying attention.

Since I know my mind wanders quickly (oh look, pretty shiny thing… wait, what was I doing?), I could probably find myself with this same problem. That is one reason I see for me, having a single tank that I dont need to back flush (without me pulling the bung and doing it manuall) as a good thing.

Someday my focus may become better and I can handle the responsibility of two tanks. For now, Im better off with one 🙂